倫理道德與因果

Putin leans here on a strange theory advanced by the 20th-century historian and ethnographer Lev Gumilev. The son of two of Russia's most famous poets, Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev maintains that every people' possesses a distinct life force: a "bio-cosmic" inner energy or passionate substance that he calls passionarnost. Putin may have known Gumilev in St Petersburg at the start of the 1990s. At any rate, he has embraced his ideas and never misses an opportunity to refer to them. In February last year, he said: " I believe in passionarnost. In nature as in society, there is development, climax and decline. Russia has not yet attained its highest point. We are on the way". According to him, Russia carries the power and potential of a young people. "We possess an infinite genetic code", he has said.   In addition to Gumilev, Putin relies on another thinker - a minor figure in the history of Russian thought. Last October, he spoke of...

      Most schoolchildren are taught the Declaration of Independence's most famous lines: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." But relatively few children or adults today are as familiar with the right to revolt that follows: "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.... When a long train of abuse and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."         When Thomas Jefferson penned those words, he owned hundreds of enslaved people. Yet he was acutely aware that Black people yearned for freedom no less than the white col...

        There is a pervasive idea, in popular discourse about language endangerment, that languages just slip away, becoming obsolete or falling out of use. In this view, languages are like fashions, that pass with time, or technology, that is replaced by the more advanced. Those clinging to the old languages are seen as quaint at best, and conservative, or even luddite, at worst. But this conception is wrong. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless, reassuring the colonizer that they are not to blame. Languages are not lost, they are taken. They are uprooted by malice or neglect, their speakers assimilated into a new tongue, or left to struggle in the space between the fading old and the out of reach new.         Language endangerment has continually accelerated, as the rise of nation-states and centralized, powerful governments, along with inventions such as the printing press and mass media, have created a handful of sup...

      Good health and a healthy appetite go hand in hand in Austen's novels. Her heroines when flourishing eat in moderation and without worrying too much about what they are eating and what they are not. Catherine Morland, the youthful, zestful heroine of Northanger Abbey, is blessed with "a good appetite and eats just what she wants to, when she is hungry.       The heroines' good constitutions and well-regulated appetites are also conjoined with a taste for fresh air and exercise. Often, they are determined walkers, visiting friends and neighbors on foot, enjoying scenic strolls (Catherine) or traipsing, like the best of the Romantics, through the natural world (Marianne Dashwood). Elizabeth Bennet thinks nothing of walking three miles "in [] dirty weather" to see her cold-ridden sister marooned at Netherfield, "crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at...

       I am most interested in the kinds of true war stories and war memories capacious enough to include the blood and guts as well as the boring and the quotidian. True war stories acknowledge war's true identity, which is that while war is hell, war is normal, too. War is both inhuman and human, as are its participants. Photographer Tod Papageorge's American Sports, 1970: Or How We Spent the War in Vietnam portrays war in exactly this fashion. The book features seventy photographs, all but one capturing American sporting events: the players and the fans, the press conferences and the team buses, the dugouts and the locker rooms, with the participants being men, women, young, old, black, white, ugly, beautiful. The last photograph is the one that does not depict a sporting event or its participants. It is of the War Memorial in Indianapolis, with these words on the facing page: "In 1970, 4,221 American troops were killed in Vietnam." This is horror as an appendi...

     Global coffee prices have soared to their highest in nearly 50 years due to poor weather in Brazil and Vietnam, forcing roasters such as Nestle to raise prices and consumers to hunt for cheaper brews amid the cost of living crisis. Production problems linked to bad weather in Brazil and Vietnam have seen global supplies lagging demand for three years. That has left stocks depleted and driven benchmark ICE exchange prices to a peak of US$3.36 per lb.       Last time coffee traded that high was in 1977 when snow destroyed swathes of Brazil's plantations. However, the shock to consumers was much bigger back then. If adjusted for inflation, US$3.36 per lb in 1977 would be equivalent to US$17.68 today.       Brazil, which produces nearly half the world's arabica , high-end beans used primarily in roast and ground blends, experienced one of its worst droughts on record this year. Although rains finally arrived in October, soil moistu...

  甲、〈明妃曲〉王安石 明妃初出漢宮時，淚濕春風鬢腳垂。低徊顧影無顏色，尚得君王不自持。歸來卻怪丹青手，入眼平生幾曾有；意態由來畫不成，當時枉殺毛延壽。一去心知更不歸，可憐著盡漢宮衣；寄聲欲問塞南事，只有年年鴻雁飛。家人萬里傳訊息，好在氈城莫相憶；君不見咫尺長門閉阿嬌，人生失意無南北。 乙、〈再和明妃曲〉歐陽脩 漢官有佳人，天子初未識。一朝隨漢使，遠嫁單于國。絕色天下無，一失難再得。 雖能殺畫工， 於事竟何益！耳目所及尚如此，萬里安能制夷敵？漢計誠已拙，女色難自誇。明妃去時淚，灑向枝上花。狂風日幕起，飄泊落誰家？紅顏勝人多薄命，莫怨春風當自嗟。 審視明妃觀點的差異： 王安石 毛延壽 對於毛延壽被誤殺，感到惋惜，認為畫作是有主觀意識，藝術的侷限性，也批判漢元帝識人不明。 明妃命運 對明妃的命運看法不同，將明妃與阿嬌相類比，表示人生失意是普遍性，不分南遠北近。也對明妃的際遇表示同情與無奈，著重於人生無常的感慨，附有哲學性思考。 政策 詩中未直接點名漢朝政策失敗，而透過明妃的個人經歷，反應宮廷的腐敗和君王的昏庸。像是君王歸來責怪曾為昭君畫像的畫師毛延壽，暗諷皇帝識人不明，但整體重心在人生哲理和個人情感。 帶有哲理性和個人命運的普遍性 歐陽脩 毛延壽 文中提到雖能殺畫工， 於事竟何益。雖然殺畫工於事無補，但主要強調漢朝政策的失誤，而非為畫工開脫。而在葛洪‧畫工棄市提到 「 匈奴入朝，求美人爲閼氏。於是上案圖，以昭君行。及去，召見，貌爲後宮第一，善應付，舉止優雅。帝悔之，而名籍已定。 帝重信於外國，故不復更人。 」 歐陽修更強調殺畫工也改變不了明妃遠征，反應政治決策的批判。 明妃命運 前面提到王昭君出塞時流淚，眼淚如同春花灑落，而黃昏時刻狂風吹起，將落花吹得四處飄零，如同王昭君的命運，漂泊無依。最後一句點出明妃紅顏薄命的宿命，強調著不應怨天尤人，應自嘆命運。 政策 說漢元帝眼前的美醜尚不能辨，萬里之遙夷狄的情況如何判斷。也引出漢朝的和親政策來維持和平，實際上計謀拙劣，靠女色也無法為政策自辯。而最後的勸誡，帶有強烈的反諷，表現上歸結於明妃自身的紅顏，實際上是政治的失敗中，女性成為最終犧牲品的殘酷事實，這是一種責任轉嫁與社會不公的無聲控訴。 帶有較多的批判性，政治與社會批判 心得： 歷史上較有名的安史之亂，造成唐朝很大的災難，唐玄宗遇上楊貴妃，有人認為是 楊貴妃的錯。但...